Specifying the Input Method Type in Android

Every text field expects a certain type of text input, such as an email address, phone number, or just plain text. So it’s important that you specify the input type for each text field in your app so the system displays the appropriate soft input method (such as an on-screen keyboard).

Beyond the type of buttons available with an input method, you should specify behaviors such as whether the input method provides spelling suggestions, capitalizes new sentences, and replaces the carriage return button with an action button such as a Done or Next. This lesson shows how to specify these characteristics.

Specify the Keyboard Type

You should always declare the input method for your text fields by adding the android:inputTypeattribute to the <EditText> element.

Figure 1. The phone input type.

For example, if you’d like an input method for entering a phone number, use the "phone" value:

Enable Spelling Suggestions and Other Behaviors

The android:inputType attribute allows you to specify various behaviors for the input method. Most importantly, if your text field is intended for basic text input (such as for a text message), you should enable auto spelling correction with the "textAutoCorrect" value.

You can combine different behaviors and input method styles with the android:inputType attribute. For example, here’s how to create a text field that capitalizes the first word of a sentence and also auto-corrects misspellings:

Specify the Input Method Action

Most soft input methods provide a user action button in the bottom corner that’s appropriate for the current text field. By default, the system uses this button for either a Next or Done action unless your text field allows multi-line text (such as with android:inputType="textMultiLine"), in which case the action button is a carriage return. However, you can specify additional actions that might be more appropriate for your text field, such as Send or Go.

To specify the keyboard action button, use the android:imeOptions attribute with an action value such as "actionSend" or "actionSearch". For example:

Figure 4. The Send button appears when you declare android:imeOptions="actionSend".

You can then listen for presses on the action button by defining a TextView.OnEditorActionListener for the EditText element. In your listener, respond to the appropriate IME action ID defined in the EditorInfo class, such as IME_ACTION_SEND. For example: